Previously, it was thought that women, or the guardians who controlled their property, showed a preference to invest dotal property in secure ventures.
Unlike many other female testators, Call makes no mention of her dowry in her will, and so it is likely that the property she held at the end of her life represented more than her dotal property alone.
Perhaps the most fascinating fact Gager uncovers demonstrates that in nearly one third of the contracts examined unmarried women, widows, and women who had separated their
dotal property from their husbands' command initiated adoptions of daughters and thus built families of their own.
